Frank met Angela Weiss in a Starbucks merely six months before the forced migration of half of humanity. At the time, he had no idea what the take-up would be (except that he, Frank, would be one of them), and Angela had no notion that a leave-taking would be required. She thought she was merely chatting to an old friend, when her old friend – out of the blue – said that the planet was doomed, but that he had found another one, almost as good. Maybe.
To understand the back-story to this extraordinary revelation, and the beginnings of our civilization, you must imagine a time when teleportation was – if not the stuff of fable – at least applicable only to photons and the occasional atom. And even then, the result of the act – the item coughed from the wormhole, so to speak – would have been viewed as a copy, not the real thing. One commentator, name of Jack Holden, even observed that being dissolved into one’s component atoms might be acutely painful, all for the construction of a doppelganger at the other end. This, of course, is nonsense. There’s no such thing as a copy when the act of copying is perfect. You merely create a second original, which is mighty handy when you’ve destroyed the first. But such thoughts were not in Angela’s head at the time. No one had ever been teleported – let alone half the human race – so, in fact, she was more concerned with the end of the world than flipping out of there. Her exact words were:
“Jesus Christ, Frank. You never do things by half, do you?”
He toyed with the wooden stirrer in the broad saucer beneath his cup. “I’d like you to come with me,” he said.
“Pah!” she replied. Angela, though good company for occasional nights over the previous ten years, was neither the sentimental nor the credulous kind of girl Frank would like her to be. He’d had problems convincing her of things before, such as that he loved her. Ten years of trying had left him exhausted. For Angela didn’t believe in love, neither did she believe in teleportation nor that the world was going to end. To ask her to suddenly believe in all three simultaneously had been a mistake, Frank would admit, had he ever admitted things about Angela to anyone. So he felt the need for action over words.
“Come back to my place?” he asked. Then, when she looked stern, added: “Not for the usual reason. I’ve got something to show you.”
The end of the world as we know it
The world’s about to end. There’s a star two thousand light years away that’s about to go supernova and emit a gamma ray burst that will wipe out life on earth. Frank Hope works for a government agency, and has wind of this impending catastrophe. He also has a potential solution. A teleportation machine that, were it working, could project people like a torch beam onto one of the earth-like worlds being discovered regularly in the 21st century.
It is expected that 50% of humanity will take the risk. But will it work? Who will be chosen? Where will they be going, and what will happen to those who are left behind?
This is what we came up with in the pub, and Dave has bravely volunteered to take it from here…
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